The imaginary Other spectator:

a paradigm for early cinema spectatorship

A paper presented at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference, March 22, 2017 by

Beth Corzo-Duchardt, Muhlenberg College

INTRODUCTION: HUGO

I begin with a clip from Martin’s Scorsese’s 2011 film Hugo:

[show clip - SLIDE 2 - wait for “no one had ever seen anything like it before”]

Here we have a repetition of a familiar story; one that film scholars often refer to as

“cinema’s founding myth.” It is regarded as myth because there is no historical evidence to

suggest that this 1895 Parisian audience thought they were in danger of being run over. Why

does Scorsese repeat it here? Shouldn’t he know better? Well, as a storyteller he understands that

the idea of these naïve spectators of the past help to ensure 21st century viewers’ appreciation for

early films. [SLIDE 3 – train film still] Scorsese knows that most viewers will find them

boring, (and having taught film history, I know first-hand it’s hard to get Millennials excited

about early cinema). So, simultaneous to showing The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, Scorsese

gives us [SLIDE 4 – Isabelle’s narration] Isabelle’s narration [SLIDE 5 – panicking

audience] along with a dramatic reenactment of an astonished and frightened audience. Thus,

our viewing pleasure is triangulated through the idea of these imaginary other spectators of the

past who (allegedly) feared for their lives.

Now, to be fair to Scorsese, even though there is no evidence of audience panic at that

particular screening in 1895, newspapers of the era do supply some accounts of similar

Presented at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, March 22, 2017   1
phenomena. [SLIDE 6a] For examples, there’s the widely-circulated story of two women who Q

“screamed and fainted” at the premiere of another train film, the Empire State Express,1 [SLIDE

6b]; another about how all the women in the front row Q “ducked their heads … to keep … from

getting wet,”2 while watching an ocean scene; [SLIDE 6c] and another, which I’ll analyze in a

moment, about a group of indigenous Mexicans who ran out of a theater for fear of being run

over by a moving-image-fire engine. Allegedly.

[Slide 7 – blank] Scholars often cite these stories as evidence of the subjective experiences

for movie-goers in the early days. There are two dueling interpretations: One camp interprets

them as evidence that the cinema provided a radically new perceptual experience for first-time

audiences: that “No one had ever seen anything like it before.” This is the tradition Scorsese is

tapping into, of course.3 In the other camp are the adherents to the cinema of attractions thesis, as

articulated by Tom Gunning. It’s not that no one had ever seen anything like it before, he argues,

but that audiences went into the theater expecting to be shocked and astonished. Because moving

                                                                                                           
1
New York Telegram, 15 October 1896, New York Mail and Express, 17 October 1896.
Reprinted in Kemp R. Niver and Bebe Bergsten, Biograph Bulletins: 1896-1908 (Los Angeles:
Locare Research Group, 1971), 14; “The Theaters.” The Atlanta Constitution, 13 December
1896, B35.
2
“Chevalier has a Rival,” New York Sun (Evening), 24 April 1896. Reprinted in Vitascope Press
Comments, Raff & Gammon, 1896,
http://mss3.libraries.rutgers.edu/dlr/showfed.php?pid=rutgers-lib:23930.
3
This is the argument that Stephen Bottomore makes in his exhaustively researched article: “The
Panicking Audience?: Early Cinema and the ‘Train Effect,’” Historical Journal of Film, Radio &
Television 19, no. 2 (1999): 177. In the article, he insists that he is not suggesting that early
cinema viewers actually confused image for reality, but rather, that “the immediate and
instinctive reaction in the viewing situation might well be to confuse screen image with the real
thing” (190). He argues that the preponderance of anecdotes of panicking audiences
“demonstrate the unsurprising likelihood that in the initial stages of introduction of a new
medium like photography or cinema to people who are unfamiliar with the medium (particularly
those from non-industrial societies), a shocked or even alarmed reaction might well be expected”
(199).

Corzo-Duchardt – SCMS 2017 2

pictures were presented alongside other popular entertainments---such as magic shows and roller

coasters---that also elicited physically jarring and sometimes panicked responses.4

There are two things missing from this debate that I want to address today. [SLIDE 8 -

text] First, close readings of the newspaper articles in which these stories first appear. My close

readings reveal that there are profound power differentials between the narrators who observe

audiences panicking and the individuals who they say are doing the panicking. [SLIDE 9 text]

The other thing missing from the debate is a theorization of the affective function these stories

served for those who wrote and consumed them. I draw on and adapt Christain Metz’s concept of

“partial identification” to do this to articulate this. By the end of this talk I hope you’ll be

convinced that film historians should shift our focus away from arguing about what these stories

might tell us about the subjective movie-going experiences for the audience members who are

said to scream and faint, duck their heads, or run away, and instead focus on what these stories

can tell us about the subjective movie-going experiences of those who wrote, published, and read

these tales.

HOW A BIOGRAPH CAUSED A PANIC

I turn now to a close reading of the article I briefly mentioned above. [SLIDE 10 – article

clipping] “How a Biograph Caused a Panic Among Indians,” was published in 1900 and

narrated by a man who is identified only as a “well-known lawyer.” It begins: [no new slide]

“One of the most laughable experiences I ever had […] was in Tucson, Arizona,

and not so long ago either.”

                                                                                                           
4
Tom Gunning, "An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)credulous Spectator," in
Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film, ed. Linda Williams (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 1995.

Corzo-Duchardt – SCMS 2017 3

After this set up, this unnamed lawyer relays his experience witnessing audience panic at an

early film exhibition. I quote: [SLIDE 11 - text]

“The last scene was one of the most realistic given by these machines—the

advance of a fire engine at full speed, which first appeared far down the street.

[…]

[SLIDE 12 - text] [O]n came the horses, the driver flourishing his whip, the

smoke jutting forth in puffs from the engine, and the magnificent gray [horses]

were in the foreground on the stage, at the next leap they would be in the

audience/ and then with a cry that could have been heard a block off, the entire

Mexican contingent rose and wildly attempted to get out of the way. […]

[SLIDE 13 - text] In a marvelously short time [they] were in the street, heading

for their homes, or congregated in little knots to tell others what a narrow escape

they had had from being crushed beneath the fire engine.5

He goes on to describe how those who remained in the theater erupted in laughter at this display

of panic and concluded this tale by saying

[SLIDE 14- text] “I don't know whether those Mexican women ever discovered

the real nature of the entertainment, but it will be a long time before they will

occupy front seats in that theater again.”6

[SLIDE 15 - blank] This description posits an experiential division between on the one side, the

narrator-and-other -“normal”-spectators who understood the basic features of moving image

technology, and on the other side, the “primitive-minded” indigenous Mexicans who did not

                                                                                                           
5
“How a Biograph Caused a Panic Among Indians.”
6
Ibid.

Corzo-Duchardt – SCMS 2017 4

have the mental capacity to understand that the fire engine in the theater was only an illusion. His

description also emphasizes how much pleasure he and his compatriots took from watching those

other spectators panic. That pleasure, I argue, is akin to the pleasure that Scorsese was tapping

into in Hugo, by showing us a dramatic reenactment of audience panic from 1895. And I suspect

that the lawyer’s tale about the panicking Mexican audience, was just as fictional as Scorsese’s.

After all, this was the era of yellow journalism, of really fake news. The title of the article: [no

slide] “How a Biograph Caused a Panic Among Indians” amounts to 19th-Century click-bait.

Stories about colonial subjects’ fearful encounters with modern technology was a standard, and

frankly clichéd trope by 1900. The vast majority of newspaper accounts of audience panic in this

era single out members of marginalized groups. They’re never talking about a general panic, but

rather an isolated panic attributed to specific women, immigrants, indigenous people, working

class people, African Americans, or children. 7 This should make us very skeptical.

Contrary to what many film historians have claimed, then, I am arguing that these stories

do not provide valid evidence that the cinema constituted a radically new perceptual experience.

Nor do I believe they corroborate the cinema of attractions thesis—at least not in the way that

Gunning has argued. My claims are not incompatible with the cinema of attractions idea. In fact,

I do think that these stories can tell us something about one particular attraction that the early

cinema had in common with other popular amusements of the day: [SLIDE 16 – brochure for

Philippine Exposition at 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair] those side-show and world’s fair

                                                                                                           
7
The myth of the generalized panicking audience Hugo references only emerges later on. The
first mention of it appears in a 1940’s film history book. Gunning traces this story to Georges
Sadoul’s Histoire générale du cinema (General History of Cinema), Vol 1: L’invention du
cinema (1832-1897) (France: Denoël, 1946). See “An Aesthetic of Astonishment.” The crucial
point is that whenever these stories appear there’s always an experiential distance between the
normal spectator who narrates the account and the panicking spectators being observed. book is

Corzo-Duchardt – SCMS 2017 5

attractions, like he Philippine Exposition at the 1904 World’s Fair that put so-called primitive

people on display for the awe and pleasure of white spectators. [SLIDE 17 – blank] Stories

about certain audience members panicking circulated rapidly, among newspapers, trade journals,

and even fictionalized representation (the famous Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show would

be a prime example, but the trope also appeared in short stories, novels and cartoons). These

stories implanted the idea of the primitive spectator into the American imaginary. In other words,

they served as paratexts that signaled to QUQ “normal” audiences what kinds of pleasures they

could expect from the movies. In this way, partial identification with the imaginary other

spectator became a paradigm for early cinema spectatorship in the United States.

PARTIAL IDENTIFICATION

[SLIDE 18 – partial identification] Let me explain what I mean by partial identification,

and then we’ll return to the lawyer’s story for a closer read. I’m borrowing the term from

Chritian Metz who also uses it in the context of addressing the myth of the panicking spectator at

the Grand Café in 1895, although he’s not at all interested in its historical specificity. Instead, he

interprets the story as a myth that illustrates the fundamental desire that underlies all cinematic

spectatorship.8 He argues that “We” [and I’m using scare quotes, I think we need to trouble that]

displace onto the figure of the panicking spectator our own primal desires when in fact this

panicking spectator, which he calls the credulous spectator, is within us all. He describes an

internal split within the individual between the [SLIDE 19a – Hugo and Isabelle] incredulous

spectator who knows the moving image is an illusion, and [SLIDE 19b – panicking audience]

                                                                                                           
8
Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1982), 72-73.

Corzo-Duchardt – SCMS 2017 6

the credulous spectator who believes the image is real because he has not yet developed the

capacity to distinguish between cinematic illusion and material reality. Metz writes: Q: “The

credulous person is, of course, another part of ourselves, he is still seated beneath the incredulous

one or in his heart, it is he who continues to believe, who disavows what he knows.” [SLIDE

19c – add text] Metz believes that we forge a Q “partial identification” with the imaginary

credulous spectator of the past in order to Q “sustain [our] credulousness in all

incredulousness.”9 In other words, partial identification with the imaginary other spectator

enables the pleasure of losing oneself in the world of the film, the pleasure of complete belief in

the reality of the image. It’s important to emphasize that Metz clearly identifies these panicking

spectators as figments of imagination. He calls them Q “personified projection[s].” [SLIDE 19d

– add text] I refer to them, collectively, as the imaginary Other spectator.

PAUSE.

Now, while Metz understands this partial identification with the imaginary other spectator

through a psychoanalytic framework as a universal condition that underlies all cinema

spectatorship,

[SLIDE 20 – my text] I understand partial identification with the imaginary other

spectator through the lens of critical race theory as a cultural and historical

phenomenon that is bound up in the politics of American imperialism and white

supremacy specific to the era.

We see this very clearly in the story narrated by the Tucson lawyer. [SLIDE 21- article

title] When I introduced it, I argued that the presence of the Mexican contingent and their panic

was crucial to his pleasure. I also pointed to the experiential division that his account sets up

                                                                                                           
9
Ibid., 72-73.

Corzo-Duchardt – SCMS 2017 7

between himself and the Mexicans. Now, one might just interpret his story as him having a laugh

at the expense of a racialized stereotype and leave it at that. But as Stuart Hall reminds us

[SLIDE 22- Hall quote] “The play of identity and difference which constructs

racism is powered not only by a positioning of [the Other] as the inferior species

but also, and at the same time, by an inexpressible envy and desire.”10

This “play of identity and difference” which constructs racism is, I argue, also operative

in the lawyer’s partial identification with the Mexican spectators. Certainly, some of his pleasure

was about feeling superior to them, but there was also operative an envy and a desire to, in

Metz’s words to Q “sustain his credulousness in all incredulousness.” [SLIDE 23 – Blank]

There’s an ambivalence built into the language of the lawyer’s description that reveals

how these indigenous Mexican women served as vehicles for his vicarious pleasure through

partial identification. Let’s take a closer look. He begins in an observational and evaluative

mode:

[SLIDE 24 - text] “The last scene was one of the most realistic given by these

machines—the advance of a fire engine at full speed, which first appeared far

down the street.”

Soon however, he dispenses with objective language and shifts into a first-person account from

the perspective of a credulous spectator, confusing image for reality:

[SLIDE 25 - text] “on came the horses, the driver flourishing his whip, the smoke

jutting forth in puffs from the engine, and the magnificent gray [horses] were in

the foreground on the stage, at the next leap they would be in the audience.”

                                                                                                           
10
Hall, Stuart. New Ethnicities 444.

Corzo-Duchardt – SCMS 2017 8

It seems like the lawyer is owning a naïve belief in the physical reality of the image. But that

only lasts a moment. The next half of the sentence abruptly shifts / from a description of his view

of the film, to a description of his view of the Mexican spectators.

[SLIDE 26 – text] “and then with a cry that could have been heard a block off,

the entire Mexican contingent rose and wildly attempted to get out of the way.”

This second part of the sentence doesn’t really fit with the first part; there’s a confusion about

whose point of view he’s describing. At the start of the sentence, it seems like his point of view

is aligned with the panicking spectators. [SLIDE 27 - blank] This rhetorical slippage is

indicative of his partial identification with Mexican spectator, who I suspect are figments of his

imagination. I read this lawyer’s description of the Mexicans’ panic as his fantasy of the kind of

experience he desires to have at the movies. His relation to the moving image is triangulated

through his racist, though envious, presumptions about the indigenous Mexicans belief in the

reality of the image.

What’s at stake here? Why might the lawyer desire to completely lose himself to the power

of the moving image? Metz would say this is an articulation of the fundamental human desire to

return to pre-Oedipal juissance. I think it’s about a cultural response to the ennui of modernity.

According to the white supremacist logic of early 20th century America, which this lawyer

clearly buys into, these indigenous Mexican women represent living relics of a primitive past.

They are, he presumes, unburdened by highly developed intellects and the pressure to keep up

with modern living. The desire to become primitive—at least temporarily, was an appeal

articulated across American popular culture of the era. Just think of [SLIDE 28 – book covers]

the writing of Jack London [SLIDE 29 - Tarzan] the Tarzan franchise, [SLIDE 30 – Philippine

exposition] the Philippine exposition at the World’s fair, and [SLIDE 31] the noble savage trope

Corzo-Duchardt – SCMS 2017 9

more broadly. But while white Americans may have tended to idealize the people they labeled

“primitive,” their identification with them could only ever be partial. Otherwise it might

destabilize white supremacy and would risk delegitimizing the nation’s practices of settler

colonialism, Jim Crow segregation and imperialistic endeavors in the Pacific. [SLIDE 32] These

cultural determinants account not only for the partiality of the identification with the other

spectator, but also the very construction of the imaginary Other spectator in the first place.

[SLIDE 33a] I conclude with a question: What is the relationship between the imaginary

other spectator that enables our pleasure in watching the old films embedded in Hugo and the

[SLIDE 33b] imaginary primitive spectators who populated the pages of newspapers and trade

journals in the days of early cinema? Scorsese’s 2011 film encourages its audience, us, to see

ourselves as more modern, and more technologically advanced then the spectators of the past

who were frightened by a moving image train. This real temporal, generational, distance is

mirrored in the imagined temporal and generational distance between the lawyer and the

Mexicans who are coded as primitive and technologically backward. [SLIDE 34 - title] I think it

behooves us to ask ourselves whether the persistence of the myth of the panicking spectator is a

vestige of the imaginary other spectator of the cinema’s earliest days; an imaginary other

spectator that is a personified projection of white Americans’ desire, disdain, and envy of the

Other.

Thank You.

Corzo-Duchardt – SCMS 2017 10